Romans 8:31-39 He's Got This

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek preaches his series in the Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in.

Confidence in Salvation and the Flow of Romans 8

Good morning, and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsek, I'm the lead pastor here, and I am really glad that we have the opportunity to be together on this wonderful, beautiful Sunday morning. I realize that you could be out doing a whole bunch of different things, and so it is a beautiful thing when we get an opportunity to gather together in the name of Jesus Christ.

I hope that this is not the extent of your worship experience this week, last week or this week. I hope that throughout the week, you found yourself uttering praises to him when you received good news.

I hope that you've turned to him for guidance in the tricky parts. I hope that you've acknowledged his presence with you moment by moment, and turned those thoughts and those moments into worship. And I hope that that's a result of our gathering together this morning, too, is that it's a reminder of the way that we ought to be living our lives day by day and moment by moment.

This morning, we're gonna be wrapping up one of the large sections of the Book of Romans. I received an outline back in Bible college from a professor, and he said, there is one thing you will certainly remember after you graduate and on into your adulthood.

He said, you will learn this outline, and you will remember this outline for the Book of Romans. And when I started to preach on the Book of Romans, I remembered that outline. So it's sin, salvation, sanctification, sovereignty, and service.

Those are the five kind of breakdown portions of the Book of Romans, and a simple way of remembering it. And we're gonna be looking at a text that concludes this section on sanctification, a big word that means the way that God works with a person who is now, belongs to him by faith in Jesus Christ, and is living with him.

And then we're gonna be, this text is kind of bridging the gap between, or bridging those two sections, sanctification and sovereignty. And we'll see some components of sovereignty in this, and some wrapping up of the idea of sanctification.

But in our text, Paul is gonna address a fundamental question. He's gonna basically address the question that since we are ungodly and unrighteous in ourselves, and since salvation comes as a free gift of God's grace through faith, since those things are true, and he's well established that already in previous chapters, then how are we to live this life with Jesus now?

How are we to live this life with Jesus now? The reality is, I think we all know this, we all know we fail, we all know that we falter, we know that we are not perfect, although we might want to present that to others as if we're perfect, we know we're not in our hearts.

We know that laws and rules cannot tame us. We know that sin displeases God. And further, we know that this life brings with it its own share of pain and suffering. And so one of our fundamental needs in this life of insecurity, with all of these things that feel somewhat stacked against us, one of the fundamental things that our hearts crave and long for is confidence.

Confidence and assurance that we are on the right track. How many of you would acknowledge that there are times when you felt unconfident? There are times when, no, no, really, guys? Maybe you're just not awake yet.

But I think all of us at times have felt that kind of insecurity, am I okay? Is everything okay here? Is everything going all right? Am I on the right track here? Am I figuring this out? And Paul is both preparing us for the next few chapters that are gonna be on the sovereignty of God and wrapping up a section on sanctification or how we should live in light of the righteousness that we couldn't earn that's been given to us through the cross of Jesus Christ.

And so this text here that we're looking at this morning is gonna drip with gratitude and exaltation in the God who keeps us, who holds us. The text was written to place our hearts squarely on the sovereignty of our God for our salvation.

So how secure are you in your salvation? I'm only as secure, and I would suggest you're only as secure as the God is who holds you. How strong is he? So with that question in our minds, how secure is my salvation?

Let's open our Bibles to Romans chapter eight verses 31 through 39 and see the text that God has revealed to answer that question, how secure are you in your salvation? Romans 8, 31 through 39, if you have a device, navigate in that device over, open your app or whatever.

Romans 8, and if you don't have a Bible, then grab the one that's under the seat in front of you. I think there's a few in each row, so you can grab that. But follow along as we read this. Recast God's precious and glorious and beautiful word that we have an opportunity to take in together in this gathering.

Romans 8, 31 through 39. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that who was raised. Who is at the right hand of God who indeed is interceding for us?

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, for your sake, we are being killed all the day long.

We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. Know in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you so much that you are a God who knows exactly what we need and when we need it. And I'm convinced that everybody in this room could handle some encouraging news of confidence and assurance that we're okay with you.

And so Father, I pray that you would protect our thinking in this gathering, that we would not lead over into any false assurance. But I thank you that your spirit can bear witness with our spirit that we are indeed your children and therefore, as your children, these truths apply to us.

So that anybody here who is received by faith, Jesus Christ and his forgiveness at the cross, can stand in confidence, can walk in confidence in this next week. And ought to walk in confidence service to others around us.

And Father, I pray that from a place of confidence, we would lift our voices before you. Not in fear of you, it would be right to fear you, it would be right to be terrified of you if we were lost in our sins without this confidence.

But Father, I pray that we would rejoice and our voices would be strong and our hearts would be strong in you because of the great salvation you have worked over our hearts and lives. And so Father, for everybody here that belongs to you, I pray that you would give them that confidence that sings with joy and with delight and with exuberance this morning.

Father, that you would meet us here in this place. And Father, for anybody who belongs to you that has been beaten down by Satan and has been completely held captive to past sins and past wrongs and accused and accused and accused, Father, I pray that today would be a day of freedom because you have loved us so much and nothing can separate us from your love.

I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks again to the band for leading us. I appreciate Dave and his leadership there. Encourage you to get comfortable. Keep your Bibles open to Romans chapter eight, verses 31 through 39.

Again, our goal is to keep our focus on God's word for the remainder of our time together. And if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, take advantage of that.

And then restrooms are out the double doors down the hallway on the left if you need those at any time. I find it a beautiful thing that Scripture is very interested in explaining our lives as they are.

It doesn't sugarcoat things. It doesn't pretend that our situation is better than it is. Despite the fact that some of us might have been raised in a church that tended towards trying to sugarcoat things, Scripture doesn't.

And God has explained for us in the past two sermons from Romans chapter eight that suffering is indeed real and hope placed in anything in this life, anything that this life has to offer us is futile and foolish.

That it would be silly and goofy for us to actually think after years of experience. How many of you have experienced something break in your life? Just something rot, bust, break, something like that.

All of us have experienced that. So how foolish is it for us to then turn around and put our trust in things that rot, break, bust, and corrode and all of that stuff and get stolen? But we try to do that.

We try to do that regularly. And since we live in a world that includes suffering, and since we do not live in our own lives as we ought to live, then how can we have any confidence that this is going to go well for us?

How can we have any confidence that this is going to end well for us? Because we know that we don't even keep our own standards. We break rules all the time. Most of us have already sinned a few times today, maybe even in the car on the way here.

And so we all know that we're broken and we're busted. So how can we go out into the rest of our week? How can you launch out into Monday with any sense of confidence whatsoever? It really is a logical question.

In a world where despair and hopelessness are running rampant, we need something radical to pull us up out of that despair and that hopelessness. And you can see it in the world around us, can't you? Do you see the hopelessness?

Do you see the despair? Do you see the fear increasing in our culture and our society? I think we can all see that with our eyes. If you just, all you have to do is tune into the headlines there, into the news, and see the way that we're becoming increasingly unconfident and scared of the future kind of culture.

But our text this morning is gonna break down into two main sections that highlight the source of confidence in the life of a believer. Two main things. Paul wants us to leave this section on the Christian life and he wants to explain how in the world we can have a genuine hope, leave us with a genuine hope in this world of suffering, this world of loss, this world of sorrow, this world of sin, this world that includes death.

And so the first source of confidence is this,.

God's Work for Us

God's work for us.

God's work for us. You'll find that in verses 31 through 34. If you're taking notes, that's the first point, God's work for us. The second is going to be God's love for us. God's work for us and God's love for us.

And God's love for us is found in 35 through 39 in this text. So let's jump into God's work for us. What has he done for us that gives us confidence? And in verse 31, Paul is referring back to all that he has said since chapter five.

He's including salvation and sanctification in this summary. Both the way that we are saved and rescued and granted the righteousness of Christ by faith in him, by faith alone, by grace alone in Christ.

So we've been granted that salvation and then also now the way that he has worked in our lives since the moment that we came to faith in him and the way that he is making us more and more like his son, Jesus Christ.

So when he says, what shall we say to all these things? By these things, he means righteousness that comes from God based on faith. He means our removal from the place of sin and death and our placement into the realm of grace and life.

He also certainly includes what we talked about a couple of weeks ago, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives under these things. There's a lot of these things that have happened in the text from chapter five up through the end of chapter eight.

And so how can we summarize all of this in our lives is what he asks as the first question. And he summarizes all of these things by a list of rhetorical questions. Some of them he doesn't intend for you to necessarily answer or he doesn't answer for us but he intends for you to answer in your head.

And there are seven questions that are designed to draw us into the teaching. God desires you to be a part of the learning here. He could have certainly just given you propositional statements without the question marks at the end of the sentences.

But he doesn't just want to merely make statements to us this morning.

He wants to ask you some questions.

And he wants you to answer those in your mind. He wants you to think it through. He wants to engage your mind in the learning process here. And the first question that we see here that's intended for you to learn is, if God is for us, who can be against us?

Think it through.

If God is for us, who can be against us? You're meant to wrestle with that question. When you see a question in scripture, don't pass over it quickly. Pause for a moment and think, what is the intended answer to this?

Especially if the author doesn't give you an answer. It's there for you to ponder. It's there for you to think about. Paul won't answer this one here in the text. But I think you know how he intends for you to answer.

If God is for us, who can be against us? Well, what do you think the answer would be? No one, right? Isn't that the logical thought? But don't just jump to the answer that you think he wants from you, either.

This is a much more complicated question than what we have here at Face Value, if you're really gonna ponder it, if you're really gonna think about it. Paul's asking who could be against his people. But couldn't there be people against us?

I think we've experienced that. Paul experienced it. Who's writing this? A person who had a lot of people against him.

Paul was beaten. Paul was mocked. Paul was stoned.

Paul was shackled by people. He was imprisoned in dark dungeons by people. Can he possibly be suggesting that everyone will like us and nobody will ever oppose us for our faith?

Absolutely not.

He who wrote all the time that we ought to expect persecution in this life. So think it through. If God is for us, who can be against us? It's kind of important for us to identify the us here and the we that's gonna occur 10 times, those pronouns, us and we, combined for 10 times in these nine verses.

So it'd be good for us to get down to who's he talking about. And I believe that who he's referring to is he's writing to the Roman church, those who are followers of Christ, those who have come to understand what Jesus has done for them.

And Paul includes himself in this. So the church at Rome was made up of those who had believed in the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he's including them and himself. They had asked, the Roman church, they had asked Christ to rescue them from their sins and had received his punishment on the cross as a substitute for their own punishment.

And so if we also have Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, then we can include ourselves in the us and the we that we see here in the text. And I love what the very ancient Christian John Chrysostom said about this particular verse, this particular question.

And it's worth quoting, especially since his last name means golden mouth. And so we ought to quote him at least once here. But he said this, those that be against us, so he's acknowledging that there's some people against us, but he's gonna twist this, and I love the way that he turns the phrase here.

Those that be against us, so far are they from thwarting us at all that even without their will, they become to us the causes of crowns and the procurers of countless blessings. Unwittingly, in their persecution, they give us crowns and blessings.

Going on in the quote, in that God's wisdom turns their plots unto our salvation and glory. See how really no one is against us. You see it? John Chrysostom did. What good old golden mouth is saying here is that even those who would seek to oppose us cannot really do anything that thwarts the good purposes and good plans of God for his people, good plans that include being conformed definitively to the image of his son.

That is the destiny that we talked about last week. Everyone who has their faith and trust placed in Jesus Christ will be like him, without sin, in perfection, and in glory. And so in verse 32, God wants to reemphasize the role that eternity plays in the present sufferings of this world.

He has a kind of a theme where he likes to talk about the past and the way that the past impacts the present and the future. So Paul brings us back to the past place of our salvation and to the future glory that awaits us, that's based on that past event.

Remember that our entire life as a Christian is based in a past event that has secured a glorious future for us. And that reality gives us patient endurance in the present, regardless of what your day looks like, regardless of what kind of suffering or pain comes your way.

So look at verse 32. He says, he who did not spare his own son, but gave, past tense verb, gave him up for us. God is here saying, look at what I've already done for you.

Look at my works.

If I gave you my own son, do you think I would then just let you fall away? How will God, the question is, how will God, who didn't withhold his own son, now withhold the future kingdom from us? Giving us a present hope, a present security, a present confidence because of the past event.

He gave you his son. Do you have anything to fear anymore? Your future is secure. So the first work that God has done for us that results in our confidence in this life is he gave his son up for us. And that produces within us a confidence that he will be faithful to finish it.

And he will give us, the text says, all things. Now how many of you, when you saw that, you read that in the text and you see that God, how will he not indeed give us all things? You thought, is he gonna give us all things?

Is that a little bit of a curiosity to you that he would say he's gonna give to his children all things, like all things? Like what is all, what's included in that? That's an interesting phrase. And I believe that the phrase all things in this text is a nod back to the garden and a hint to what the future looks like.

Who did he give the earth to? Humanity in the garden. To care for it, to tend it, to be his image bearers to all of creation. We were made to be the caretakers of this world. In the beginning he gave us all things.

We broke it, but he gave us all things. We were made to bear God's image to the created order in perfection, in love, in creativity, and in glory. And our destiny is to once again be given the keys to our father's sweet ride.

It goes faster than your average car.

In its travels around the universe. It spins in an intricate dance and it will one day be the playground of humanity without the limitations of death, without the limitations of decay, without the limitations of sin, without the limitations of entropy.

And it will be ours.

And he will indeed give it to us by which we will worship him in all of the capacities that he's given to us to create and to invent and to produce and to love. Let the phrase all things ignite your imagination beyond harps and clouds and halos.

I fear that far too many Christians have set their sight and had their sight set so low that all things includes a white robe and a harp. And it says here he's gonna give us all things. Let the beauty of that future, let the beauty of that reality settle on you fresh.

Let it impact you. That's the future that you have if you belong to Jesus Christ. And that might just help a little bit in terms of dealing with frustrations and sufferings and difficulties. Yes, even the big things here.

Because remember that Paul said that he was convinced that these things are like light momentary afflictions and they're not worth comparing to. And he's talking about big things like being beaten and left for dead and things like that.

And he's saying that's nothing compared to the glory that awaits those who are his. That is meant to have a present impact. Not just, oh yeah, it's out there somewhere. But let it saturate your mind now, especially if you're going through good times.

Let it strike you now so that you're ready and prepared. Let it prepare your heart for the difficulties that you will face. Because we all know that there are difficulties. That isn't the only competence producing work that God has done for us in giving us his son.

But verse 33 brings another question we are meant to wrestle with. Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? Who will bring a charge against God's chosen ones? The word elect there is a word that's being used for his people.

It's just basically a name, a designation. Those who have been chosen by him. This is similar to the first question, but a bit more to the point of our deepest concerns as fallen humanity. These questions kind of spiral into a little bit more of our insecurities, peeling them apart layer by layer.

I believe that every Christian,.

And therefore every person in this room,.

Has at least once considered, and a lot of non-Christians think it too, what if God still counts my sins against me? What if I'm accused before God on that day of judgment and the accusations stick? Oh no, right?

How many of you know that would be a terrifying thing? For a sinner to fall in the hands of a righteous and holy God, that'd be a terrifying thought. This is a personal and fearful question that is being addressed here in the text.

Many could bring a charge against me. Many who have known me, I'm talking about myself here. Many who have known me in the past could step up here and make you all trust me less. How many of you know that about your own lives?

My own family could step up here and share charges against me. People stepped up and accused, even Jesus Christ himself. But this is the first question Paul answers. It is God who justifies, he said. Who can bring a charge against God's elect?

It's God who justifies. He already told us that those he has chosen, he will justify, and here in this verse, the power of the one who justifies is set over and against the power of any charges that might be brought against us.

If the most powerful and highest of all judges declares you not guilty, then certainly no charges will succeed against you. So who could possibly condemn us, Paul asks. According to verse 34, we have a pretty solid defense attorney in Jesus Christ.

He who died to pay the punishment for each and every sin I will ever commit was raised victorious over sin and death. And he now sits at the right hand of God, interceding for us. He is defending us before the almighty judge of the universe constantly and perpetually.

He's always on retainer and he's always working for you. Jesus sits in heaven right next to the Father, always present, always reminding the Father that one belongs to me, they are mine. This is supposed to bring to your heart and to your life a radical confidence.

He gave his son up for us and will certainly give us all things. He has justified us, declaring us righteous because Jesus paid the punishment for our sins. And Jesus himself, Jesus himself is in heaven with his Father, always, always, always interceding for you.

And for all who belong to Christ by faith.

God's Love for Us in Christ

The first half of the text is somewhat transactional in talking about the work that God has done for us. But the second half is highly relational. It's interested in why he has done it. Yes, he has done great works, but understanding why even puts us deeper into confidence in our standing with him.

Our confidence doesn't come only from the work of God on our behalf, but it also comes from God's love for us that has been expressed in that work. Why did he do it? Because he loved us. So the first question in this last section is concerned with who could separate us from the love of Christ.

The questions are building on one another in a way that they mine deeper into our fears. Who could be against us? Could our sins still bring us down? Could we still be condemned? Could someone or something separate us from the love of Jesus so he stops interceding for us?

And this last question makes perfect sense from a human standpoint. All of us have pressed a relationship one step too far. You know what I'm talking about. And you've come up on the losing end. You've lost a relationship because you pressed it too far.

All of us have or will experience the loss of a relationship because we did something wrong and the person could not bring themselves to forgive or further we couldn't bring ourselves to ask for forgiveness.

The reality is we've all lived in a life where people get tired of each other. We've made it all the way to the end of someone's forgiveness at some point in our lives. And if anybody could make it out to the end of God's forgiveness, it would be me.

And I feel it and I believe that you feel it too. That a lot of times we allow our experience of life in a fallen world to bleed over into our understanding of who God is and we go, well, he must be just like us.

And so therefore, I know what it's like to relate to people and I've let people down and they've let me down and where there's broken relationships down here, oh my goodness, what do I need to do? What would happen if my relationship with God was broken because I did something wrong?

And then that fear settles into us. Paul lists some strange possibilities of things that came to his mind when he was like, well, what could separate us? What kind of things are people thinking out there?

What kind of things are people talking about that might stop God's love or might make us think that God doesn't love us anymore or might actually cause us to fall away? Could tribulation, distress, persecution, famine?

He says nakedness, which is extreme poverty is what he's getting at there. Danger or the sword, which represents death and war.

Could these things separate us from Christ?

And I just wanna point out something that all of these, I'm not gonna go into each one in detail, but I want us to think this through. And it's very important that we think about this rightly. All of these are circumstances that happen to a person.

They're not an action. I don't act out tribulation. I don't act out extreme poverty or I don't act out famine. Famine is something that strikes us, right? So how could, think about it logically, how could extreme poverty separate us from God?

Or how could persecution separate us from God? Or how could famine, like what is the thinking here that Paul is going through in his mind? And the conclusion would be that our response to these things are what Paul has in mind.

The way we would respond to persecution, the way we would respond to extreme poverty, the way we would respond to war, to distress or to tribulation. He's not afraid that if famine struck us and came down upon us and the means of production of food were gone and agriculture was wiped out in America and it got to the point where you were living in extreme hunger, that somehow God would look upon our hunger and go, ooh, that's gross, and leave.

That's not the way, that's not what he's thinking here. The concern is that we might go away, right? That we might be knocked off the tread. We might be knocked off the trail. We might be knocked off of the love of God by bad things that happen to us, right?

Do you see that that's what he's getting at here? So how do you know that you're not gonna get knocked off the track of love for God by these kinds of things.

Happening?

Will any future difficulty knock you, I'm talking to you, will any future difficulty knock you, unforeseen thing that comes down the pipeline, the loss of a spouse, the loss of a child, the loss of the diagnosis of cancer, anything, is it gonna knock you off your salvation?

Are you gonna be separated from the love of God based on your response to any of these things?

And the answer is no.

For those who belong to Christ, starvation, tribulation, war, none of these things will take them from the one thing that they have found that matters most. Paul is confident of that. God is confident of that.

They cannot be peeled off, they're like a permanent sticker stuck forever to the love of Jesus. Verse 36 is comforting in an awkward kind of way because it's a little bit of a side note here. Paul gets ramped up and then he takes us in a sidewards direction and you're like, wait, I lost momentum here.

But he's quoting Psalm 44, 22. And he's quoting about persecution in the Old Testament. Paul is reminding us to expect hardships, to expect difficulty. And this, he wants to clarify for us, is not a New Testament thing.

This is not something new. The people of God have always been the target of the world. So in context, verse 36 says suffering and trouble will indeed, expected, it's gonna be ours in this world. But suffering and trouble will not peel those who have been saved away from the love of Christ.

As a matter of fact, according to verse 37, he ramps it up. No, when we, when persecution faces the follower of Jesus Christ, we are more than conquerors, he says. The shoe brand Nike gets their name from the Greek word victory.

And the word here in verse 37 is Nike, but it has a prefix attached to it. It's hyper Nike. These are really good Nikes. We are super conquerors. We are like tricked out in victory. Like this is, I mean, this is amazing, amazing, amazing victory.

Superlative language. And not in ourselves. Now, you don't have it in yourself to be more than a conqueror, but look at the text in verse 37. We are conquerors, how? Through Jesus Christ who has loved us.

How do you know you won't be knocked off your faith in the future by something terrible? Because the God who has loved you and saved you is the God through whom you conquer. My future hope is not in my strength to hang on to God, but it is in his strength to hold on to me.

And I will conquer through him who has loved me. And here at the apex of encouragement comes I think maybe the most clear assurance for my own soul in all of scripture. I go back to this text regularly in terms of encouragement.

Paul goes over the top to communicate this reality to us that nothing, nothing, nothing can separate us.

From the love of God in Christ.

If you are in the love of God through Christ, then let me encourage you recast to listen in to the confidence that God desires to communicate to you this morning. Paul was steadfast in his assurance. He said, I'm confident of this, that nothing can separate a believer from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

And he explains this by he's gonna list two sets of four and one single word. He's gonna make some contrasting words to try to cover all of your life, all of your existence. And he begins with this first two set.

What can separate us from the love of Christ? He's confident that death nor life can separate us. The realm of death, the realm of life, whatever transpires in both of those arenas cannot separate the follower of Jesus Christ, the one who's been saved and redeemed.

Nothing in death, nothing in life can separate us. But we need not fear death. In death we will be with him. But take a pause for a moment and consider the intention behind the extremely generic word life here.

We can think of death as a singular event, and rightfully so, but we cannot ever conceive of life as a singular event. Life is not a singular event. It is, the definition of it is quite the opposite. Life is all of the events that make up our existence.

Already in this first pairing, God has covered everything. Nothing in the realm of death and nothing in your life can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Nothing in life, did you hear that?